


Game

by Charly_Carmen



Category: Original Work
Genre: Canon LGBTQ Female Character, Canon LGBTQ Male Character, F/F, Gaming, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26576053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charly_Carmen/pseuds/Charly_Carmen
Summary: After years of struggling with distance and trauma, a young man finds himself united with not only his closest friend, but new friends the pair make while playing their favorite MMO together. But who inspired this avatar? And can she guide him to the victory his friends are hoping for?
Kudos: 2





	Game

**Author's Note:**

> All occurrences of they/them are singular in this short, and refer to the same character: The Off-Tank's player.

Just two boys. The latest, shiniest fantasy game in front of them. The two are cities away now but right this moment the pair is side-by-side, making characters. His friend knows the game; got in during the beta, and is making an archer.

But for himself, a mage is calling. Something about arcane words, a stick, and cloth speaks to him.

And he’s not sure why, but so does this avatar. He takes his time with it. A woman, short as the game will let him. He raises the ‘bulk’ close to the max character creation will allow, and darkens the skin to a brown, close to but not quite the color of the old oak desk his computer rests on. Apparently grandpa once wrote letters to grandma on this desk before and even after the two got together.

He also ages her, just slightly. And something about all of it feels right- necessary, even.

*************

It’s been about a month, and the pair are flying through: Nothing quite like a shiny new game that doesn’t feel like a grind, and your best friend right there with you for it! Actually keeping your characters the same level can be real hard sometimes, but these two made a promise, and this pair? Make sure to keep all of their promises. Finding the time to hang out is hard when one of you keeps changing time zones because of their parents’ careers, but that was another promise the pair made, and these two kept it to.

Now the game is telling them to try a raid, and something leaves him worried. He’s not actually good at the mechanics just yet. He can’t dodge like other players, and he doesn’t always cast the right spell at the right time. He doesn’t want some guy to yell at him because of it.

But queue up the pair does, and he stares at his avatar, rotating the camera to fidget with something, and… y’know what? It’s okay. He can do this. He can never put his finger on it, but she makes him feel safe.

There’s yelling when the raid starts, but the loud one gets himself off’d and muted, and the off-tank actually tells everyone how, plus how to report him. They also takes a moment after the raid to meet with him and his friend to teach him how to dodge, and they even offers to run the raid again, to help him with timing his magic. A second person on the friends list!

*************

Another couple months, and more characters. These three are to only be played when together- no getting away from each other in levels and loot.

Another couple of raids have gone by, and talks of starting a guild have begun, but three does not a new guild make. Still, it’s decided that it will be friends-only, and the group scours raids for good candidates.

This time, a healer. Says that his mage looks strikingly like her mother. The healer’s a younger woman with a temper, but when the tank tries to attack his mage for mistiming one single spell over the entire raid, she proceeds to inform said tank in no uncertain terms, “This mage has done a landslide of a better job than you, and if you think you’re going to get any more healing without apologizing you’ve got another thing coming- I’ve watched our off-tank and they can handle this dungeon just fine without your help. Back-up off-tank? The Archer.” Third friend.

*************

A year! He can hardly believe it’s been that long, but the group is still able to find the time. Something that’s getting both easier and harder: Time zones are solid now, but free time is not. He craves the alone moments with his best friend, but also always feels squirmy about it. Don’t assume, don’t impose. The off-tank is now pursuing a degree, and the healer is using her knack for offsetting jerks to support rallies. Something which she seems to get unnecessary practice doing with her brother, who is, “As dead to [her] as the name he insists on calling [her].”

So today, he sits in-town, waiting to see if everyone has the time after all, when he notices an avatar he wishes he didn’t recognize. The dual-wielding jerk from his first raid, who stops, and stares his way, before running off.

The healer logs on after a moment, and proceeds to sit and chat, or “Shoot the shit” as she’s a fan of saying. But lo and behold jerkface comes back.

“Hey, this kid sounds like he’s trying to talk to you?”

He’s blocked for a reason.

“Ah. I see. Well, I can shoo him off if you want, but it sounds like he wants to apologize. So, if you’re in the mood. If not,” She makes her staff flare.

He takes a deep breath, centering himself. Looking at his avatar long and hard, he agrees.

The talk is long, and uncomfortable, but revealing. He’s not claiming that he wasn’t that person then, but has taken a lot of steps to change that. He’s had a lot of events in his life, and sees a lot of things different. He’s making no claims of perfection, but his desire to make amends seems genuine. The other two have logged in by this time, and ground rules are set. But a perspective fifth member is added to the list.

*************

Five friends. One more till a guild, or at least a full party if the group is lucky. Still no main tank. Wasajerk has gotten them in with his guild for the moment, though, and the group has been assigned a tank. This is a guild raid. The first for him, and effectively the first for the others, as the closest any of them have had is either the end-beta fight, or a guild raid in another game.

And damn her mic is loud. She turns it down when the group actually listens to her, but apparently she’s used to having to do this or else she just gets talked over. This is incidentally why she has the setup she does -too many ‘oh a girl’ jerk-offs and not enough actually doing your job so that the raid doesn’t go belly-up. Normally she tanks for the guild leader because he’s the only one who respects her, but he desperately wants to tank today and he wants to test and see if this group will treat her like the group treats each other: Respect, patience, cooperation.

To say that the guild raid went off without a hitch would be… inaccurate to put it lightly. But it wasn’t for lack of effort, it was because the group wasn't the only first-timers to this raid, and a lot of people just weren’t ready for the different style that is a guild raid. That said, the tank gave her seal of approval to the group, and the guild leader asked that she run with them again for the next try, sounding both tired and relieved. Six. But, maybe not a new guild just yet.

*************

Years. Plural now, though it doesn’t feel it. Trials and errors. Set-backs, but also moves forward. Jerkface McGee had a major backslide, but has a therapist now. Losing two people very close to you at the same time on the same day because of someone doing something that shouldn’t be done can have adverse effects on your growth as a person.

After moving out, the healer severed ties to her whole family. Her mother has reached out, though, and has started the path of making amends. Something that apparently started after a divorce and kicking the brother to the curb. She’s got the right names and nouns down, and is working on Abuela about it. Perspective great-grands, adoptive and otherwise, is apparently too strong of a pull, even on such a narrow old mind.

The off-tank has taken over heading a program for rehabilitating criminals. Psych school was simultaneously too fast and too slow; information overload combined with not actually being able to use it yet, and they decided to slow down on the number of classes while starting volunteering, and their roommates agreed to support this.

The tank has dumped her job for school. Being a manager was nice and all, but when you get your boss fired for trying to feel you on top of other shit and your next boss is more of the same while knowing the line to not get fired you get a little fed up. Her law degree is coming along nicely, though.

And then there’s him and his very best friend. It took a lot of prodding from the others, but it finally happened. The pair are finally dating. The rest of the group finally sat down and talked to both about all of their anxieties and how the two are around each other, and helped the pair be a pair without needing to worry so much. Communication. Understanding and communication. Being so far apart is still rough, but that can be fixed.

This guild raid on the other hand.

The leader wasn’t able to make this one, and the guild has been undergoing a lot of changes with the tank now being the second in command. Changes that have also left the guild lacking in members, and it’s an effort now to get enough people online at the same time for a guild raid, and this was no exception. A couple more had the time, but life happens and now the guild raid is one tank and one healer short between two parties.

And boy is it showing, because now the guild is facing the final boss and he wants to curl up in a ball and it’s not even how badly the guild is losing it’s the voice and the boss and he can’t he can’t he just can’t. The tank and the healer are trying but everything is falling apart, people are dropping right and left and the voice and the visage and he’s starting to hyperventilate

“SHIT” The healer’s down. Swearing, the tank isn’t doing well either. His boyfriend is having to stay back because he’s one shot from going down, and the off-tank is desperately trying to keep the guild’s last healer up. And that’s when the fist comes down. He’s hurtled back, and 

It was dark like this too.

He’d been playing with his best friend. The two of them were an inseparable pair, but it was always more than just two boys playing games. The two were teens now, but most still just saw two boys out late horsing around. But that night, that night two had talked about it, and that night,

The pair had kissed.

Both had thought no one was watching. Both were wrong.

As he’d gone to head home a block over, a man, a large man, had confronted him. The man was angry. The man was loud. The man was mad that the two were both boys. The man was also angry that his friend was black. He remembers seeing the fist. He remembers feeling the ground. And he remembers. He remembers.

He remembers a small woman, hardly his own height. She was somewhat rounded in shape and her skin brown, almost like the oak of grandad’s desk. He remembers her getting between them, yelling words he could hardly understand. He remembers her brandishing a trowel like a knife and that she wasn’t wearing armor like a cop or a soldier, she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Startled, the man backed off enough for her to scoop him up and get him inside. The world was spinning for more reasons than one, but he was checked out of the ER and the next thing he knew his best friend in the entire world, his first kiss, was moving away because one of his parents had a job that required them to pack up and move.

He needs to focus. He needs to breathe.

He takes a long look at his avatar. There’d been a summer event, and a variety of vanity items had gone on sale. His avatar now looked like a middle-aged woman who’d been out gardening; jeans that went just past the knees, a tank-top, and rose gloves. His wand was skinned to look like a trowel. Even a wide-brimmed hat for shade. He’d made her. His avatar, the reason looking at her had always calmed him.

Assess.

One bar of HP left. The potions slot is greyed- he’s out. All that’s between him, all that’s between any of them, and this loud, angry man is a small, middle-aged woman brandishing a trowel like a knife. But she has words, and even if he can’t fully understand them, those words have power.

He sees the off-tank, trying their best. But even with tricks, they’s only a shot or two from going down. Still, those places on the wall they keeps jumping to.

He takes one last look. A defiant, middle-aged woman. Likely an overlong day that was meant to end gardening. And just like then, she will stand up. Just like then she will keep him safe.

She will keep everyone safe.

He drops a revive, his only revive, with his boyfriend hiding next to the downed healer. He casts a spell of haste, and starts bombarding the man with words in an arcane tongue. The lightning that shoots out causes the boss to fall into his next stage, where he stumbles back, making sounds of shock and dismay, and giving the guild a brief moment to breath, “Rez me REZ ME REZME!”

The off-tank wondered when he’d come to. They could tell something was happening but wasn’t sure how to address it, and was a little busy trying not to die. 

The ledges. The ledges are so the squishies can dodge the a o e’s. “Fuckin hell of course those are. Mi cielito, gonna need you to coordinate that, I’m a little busy getting us back on our feet.”

But that man. That man takes them another hour but guild does it. And by the end, everyone’s standing again. This guild. This moment. Thanks to her.

*************

“So I asked Mamá, and she remembers a situation eerily like that. And honestly? I remember overhearing it. Mamá was pissed for weeks, and kept looking for the man and the both of you after.”

And it’s a small world after all. Even McJerk is sympathetic, and well, less of a jerk. Therapy has done a lot, and he feels bad that his session got in the way of being there for the raid, but admitted that it was probably for the best- too much like his father, and his grandfather, and his uncle, and his brother, and he probably would have spiraled too as a result.

Thanking her after all this time would be nice.

“I… might be able to arrange that. I’ll talk to her about it. Heh, maybe we can swing a big ol’ meetup. There’s a restaurant here that the whole world needs to try.” The tank agrees.

She was not kidding about the resemblance being striking.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ah, winter nights. The sun sets too soon. She looks at her watch, “¿You’re sure you told them the right address?”

“Yes Mamá. Stop fretting, the group’s stuck in traffic, that’s all,” even so, her daughter checks for new text messages. Reading back over a couple, she looks up and exclaims,“There! That should be them now!”

A car pulls up and five people pour out of it, with a woman she recognizes stopping to talk to the driver as the other four walk over. And two of those, she swears she recognizes but she’s having a hard time being sure. Twelve years can make a large difference, especially when someone was only a child, but goodness it takes one by surprise.

Her daughter waves the phone-hand wildly, “Yo, over here, crew!” It’s a miracle she doesn’t drop it more often. Still, it’s her daughter’s phone, not hers.

Sheepishly, the group joins them, and everyone goes in to have some dinner. Well, sheepishly save her girl’s lady.

As group sits, talk starts, and the boy goes over his side of events.

“Honestly, I didn’t see anything until just before he struck you. I’d been working in my madre’s garden all day, and was wrapping up when I heard the shouting. I had my little sister call the police since her accent is thinnest, and jumped to get him away from you. I don’t know what I was thinking, though, he was huge!”

The boy, with help, goes over the game, his avatar, and the fight that led to the revelation. And for a moment, she’s speechless. All these years, a boy she’d only really seen once, and she’d been his guardian angel, “I’d always thought myself either stupid or crazy, and very, very lucky that this man hadn’t rounded on me. But I’m glad to know I’ve left such an impression on you all these years!”

The boy is very polite, and gushing with gratitude. She feels awkward and out of place for it, but she can’t fault him. He’s right, if she hadn’t stepped in, he might not have survived that encounter, or at the very least been far worse. It seems he’s taking up therapy now, too, starting when he gets back from this trip. The Group is going around and seeing the sights, and she’s just glad her daughter has found friends that could give her what she’d been unable to until her daughter had said “No mas” and vanished.

And whether her daughter’s abuela likes it or not, she’s about to have several adoptive grandkids.


End file.
